January 21, 2015

Kejal Vyas, WSJ

HAVANA—Cuba’s regime, which has curbed the Internet to help prevent any popular uprising, faces a new challenge to its policy: U.S. diplomacy.

On Wednesday, when the U.S. State Department’s top diplomat for the hemisphere, Roberta Jacobson, arrives here to negotiate terms of the détente announced by the Cold War foes a month ago, she will lay the path to a potential new era in connectivity for the hemisphere’s least-wired country.

Promoting Internet access for Cubans is a top priority for Washington, where last week the Obama administration began to permit commercial shipments of devices like mobile phones and laptops, as well as related software and hardware....